Month: August 2026

South China Morning Post

The official death toll from Typhoon Maysak’s devastating floods in southern China jumped from 39 to 159 on Friday, as authorities updated the figures for the first time in six weeks. According to media briefings held in Nanning and Guigang in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, 10 people remained missing and the disaster affected more than 1.65 million people, state news agency Xinhua reported. The typhoon triggered “historically rare, large-scale and persistent heavy rainfall” in the province in early July, the authorities said. In Nanning, 90 towns were affected, 23,300 people…

China-based Korean independence leader Sin Kyu-sik was the real mastermind behind his country’s provisional government in exile, according to new research that promotes him to a main player in the resistance against Japan’s occupation. The research was presented at a symposium in Seoul co-hosted by Gwangbokhoe, the official association for those who fought against Japan’s occupation. The academic exchange, which was backed by South Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, underscored how a shared legacy of anti-Japanese resistance continues to forge ties between intellectuals from the two countries. Sin,…

International students accounted for more than half of the HIV infections identified among individuals entering China through the city of Wuhan over the past few years, although the number of cases remained low, according to customs data. Public health officials analysed HIV cases detected among inbound long-term visa holders and “others” at the city’s ports of entry from 2018 to 2025. In that period, 39,816 tests were carried out on incoming travellers at the Hubei International Travel Health Care Centre, which is operated by the customs authorities. The paper did…

An asset-management arm of Guotai Haitong Securities, a leading Chinese brokerage, was ordered to pay 52.5 million yuan (US$7.8 million) in fines and penalties for activities undertaken by its offshore investment business as Beijing tightens its scrutiny of capital flows. Guotai Haitong Securities Asset Management was fined 25.9 million yuan and ordered to forfeit 26.7 million yuan in illegal gains for breaching foreign-exchange rules governing the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) programme and failing to properly report cross-border transactions, according to the company’s interim report and the State Administration of…

00:00 00:00 1.00x South China Morning Post

Solar expansion policies across China have led to a reduction in bird diversity, with wealthier and non-desert regions bearing the brunt of species loss, according to a study led by researchers in China and the US. They found that solar expansion had eaten into birds’ foraging and breeding grounds, and had left what habitat remained more fragmented, pitting China’s carbon reduction policies against biodiversity conservation. “Our findings highlight a critical green dilemma: without meticulous spatial planning, policy-driven solar expansion can inadvertently compromise local biodiversity,” the team said in a paper…

The world has seen tremendous progress in the capabilities of robots in the past year. Robots can now walk, dance, run and perform increasingly sophisticated movements, yet impressive demonstrations do not equal commercial value. Beyond the hype surrounding China’s red-hot embodied robotics sector, one challenge confronts all players: data. Robotics has long faced the challenge of achieving widespread adoption. To do so, robots must be for general purpose, reliable and economically viable – all at the same time. So far, no company has fully solved all three facets of this…